STATUS CHECK: IF YOU CAN’T SAY SOMETHING NICE … SPEAK AT THE DNC
WASHINGTON (MaceNews) – The following is Wednesday’s status check of developments in the U.S. that can influence economic, health and political outcomes:
The exposition of democratic ideals brought down to Earth or simply a political culture war, the insults flew, the arrows of invective were launched at the enemy, the Democrats railed against the man occupying the Oval Office. And he was ready. “Welcome, Barack and Crooked Hillary. See you on the field of battle,” was his tweet.
And Obama, against whom Donald Trump has never stopped blasting as ineffective, weak and worse – as recently as a couple of hours before the second night of the Democratic National Convention got underway – threw away the courtliness, the restraint of a president emeritus, and aimed his barbs with precision and venom mostly contained since 2016. Mostly, but not completely, in July saying it was “hard to fathom anybody wanting to take away people’s health care I the middle of a major public health crisis.”
Mild stuff, compared to Obama’s latest Wednesday night. Trump “hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t.” What has Trump brought the country? “170,000 dead. Millions of jobs gone. Our worst impulses unleashed, our proud reputation around the world badly diminished and our democratic institutions threatened like never before.”
And there were videos, of Trump calling immigrants “animals.” And a daughter of immigrants, Kamala Harris, becoming the official candidate to be Democratic vice president.
· But perhaps you saw the spectacle of political contest for yourself, so we move on. Speaking of international relations, President Trump earlier in the day authorized a “snapback,” for the uninitiated, a provision in United Nations sanction regulations that theoretically could force the retention of the international arms embargo against Iran. The U.S. lost the initial vote on the matter, with some of its close allies taking Iran’s side and only the Dominican Republic standing with the U.S.. And there are ways the U.S. could lose again by mechanisms other than a vote.
· The Postal Service sideshow continued to pay off for Democrats with the White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows waving goodbye to the Postmaster General. The cutbacks Democrats seized upon after President Trump conflated mail-in ballots with fraud, and suggested he would be happy if those ballots could not be delivered on time, were all Postmaster General DeJoy’s fault, not the White House’s, Meadows said. The evening network newscasts showed video of newly decommissioned mail sorting machines disassembled or in storage. The Democratic-led House votes Saturday to bolster the Postal Service against what they say are Trump’s devious intentions, a narrative to be pounded home some more next week when DeJoy is hauled before two committees.
· If you missed the president’s latest evening appearance in the White House press room Wednesday evening there was no news to speak of but that doesn’t mean there weren’t memorable moments. A reporter asked, does he subscribe to the strange beliefs of the QAnon cult which he says agrees with him about the violence in Portland and some other Democratic-led cities. Does Trump embrace those beliefs that include that Trump, the reporter asked, “is secretly saving the world from the satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals?” He answered, “Well, I haven’t heard that but is that supposed to be a bad thing or a good thing?”
· The Federal Reserve’s policy makers, at their most recent meeting, agreed there is a lot of uncertainty about the virus, that the path of the virus will determine the path of the economy and that there is a need for Congress to vote more virus relief funds, in short, no surprises. In fact the bland paragraphs were far less intense on those subjects than some of the Fed officials in their recent comments. But the markets detected a note of gloom. About four minutes after the 2 p.m. ET release of the minutes U.S. stocks sputtered and began to lose altitude. From positive to a negative closes for all three major indices in lockstep.
· The U.S. International Trade Commission opened a probe of Apple on a complaint from a Japanese company that its patents were infringed. That did not prevent Apple’s market capitalization from becoming the first of any U.S. company to pass $2 trillion.
· In upcoming economic data, the latest tally of fresh claims for jobless benefits at 8:30a ET along with the Philly Fed Business Outlook Survey. At 10a ET, rendered mostly irrelevant by pandemic disruptions, the leading economic indicators.
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Edited by Denny Gulino (denny@macenews). Content may appear first or exclusively on the Mace News premium service. For real-time email delivery contact tony@macenews.com. Twitter headlines @macenewsmacro.
